ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on invertebrate model organisms that have served us well in understanding how relative small networks can be related to behavioural functions. It explores how a sampling of model invertebrate systems allows us to examine real neurophysiological networks in a way that permits us to provide rudimentary theories of well-defined cognitive processes. A major goal of modern cognitive neurophysiology is to establish connections between cognitive processes and the pattern of neural activity embodied in networks of neurons. The most important reason for the role model preparations play in current cognitive neuroscience is that they provide a mechanism for the study of neuronal networks that are otherwise too complicated to provide any hope of unravelling the network structure. The long-term goal is to understand how neuronal networks represent cognitive activity. In most vertebrates, the number of neurons controlling mental activity is so great as to currently pose an intractable problem.
